The Senegalese hip hop pioneer, 38, invites his fellow rappers to speak out and campaign for a harmonious continent with his latest album 'Presidents of Africa'. Plus an exclusive video interview from Dakar

The Italian-writing, Paris-dwelling, prize-winning Albanian writer, painter and photographer, 39, describes beauty as disturbing, discusses her inspirations and is hopeful for Kosovo

30-year-old author of the book ‘New Romantic’, the journalist and editor of gay magazine ‘Dik Fagazine’ talks politics, left-wing politics and emotion-drained religion

We tag along with the Spanish artist, 31. A product of the Erasmus experience, he prepares his pictures for an exhibition gracing the Andalucian Centre of Flamenco in Jerez, Cadiz

Playwright, journalist and Kosovo's answer to Jeremy Paxman - the ‘pushy, irritating’ TV presenter as she describes herself, 29, exposes local politicians in a society she vouches is 'fed-up'

The self-taught guitarist is coy about his age and anti-internet-overload. The Yugoslav 'ghost' has lived his dream in London since the early nineties, his folk and jazz music celebrating the sun and the Balkans

The London-born Canadian graphic novelist, 38, is relaxed and frank as he discusses being chosen as the only black cartoonist to portray Martin Luther King, a series which took him ten long years to complete

A very personal journey through a Europe of five (or six) senses with the French anthropologist and sociology professor

The Paris-born Japanese-German slam poet, 30, lives in Mainz, is married to a Colombian and has more than plenty to recite on what Europe means to him

Based in Paris for the past 35 years, the 64 year old musician son of folklore icon Violeta Parra on Chilean Septembers, exiles and his dead mother's legacy

The award-winning British historical and comedy detective novelist, 58, on 'being like most English people' and her original brand of writing

The French journalist and long time foreign correspondent of the daily 'Le Monde', 64, evokes the subjectivity and relativity of the job, insisting on the importance of an identifiable Europe

The French singer of Dutch origin, 33, was born in Caesarea, Israel. She lived in the Netherlands until the age of 11 and sings in English. Now, she moves between Iceland, France and New York

Over the last 50 years, the 77-year-old has witnessed the initial stages of the evolution of a Union undergoing total transformation. Editor and columnist for daily bulletin Agence Europe, the EU's press agency, this Italian in love with Brussels is still an unwavering federalist

The British science fiction author, 82, on working with Hollywood greats, being caned for 'telling stories' at school and Europe being a 'wonderful idea'

The Czech-Bosnian cartoonist, 55, weaves between cartoons, cinema and geopolitics, taking his readers on a trip into a futuristic universe where political commitment is key

The Benedictine monk and author, 62, on splits within the Catholic Church, Islam plus dialogue and a humane globalisation

The Transylvania-born Hungarian author, 34, uses an unconventional narrator to express the horrors of a totalitarian system

He was one of the best Spanish bullfighters, until he ended his career in autumn 2006. The 33-year-old talks about the loneliness of the arena and bullfighting as an art form

The former Soviet soldier, 40, has spent half his life sculpting in Lithuania’s evolving public spaces, prodding the West into understanding what the face of Communism once looked like, and fighting privatisation

The 45–year-old writer and TV journalist from Ljubliana has lived and worked in Düsseldorf, Chicago and London, and published widely

The Somali writer, 62, is an important figure in African literature. A committed defender of women’s rights, he chronicles Somalia’s trip to chaos and back

Visionary film director Yuri Khashchevatsky, 60, is a principal figure of Belarusian dissent. He criticises ineffective opposition, and talks up the new role the Internet plays in the resistance

The politically engaged sculptor, 40, has been labelled by many as 'the scandal maker'

The Congolese writer and storyteller, 55, in exile in Belgium, feels that Europeans 'don’t want to take a long hard look at themselves'

One night in Barcelona's famous 'Apolo' club, where the 'international master of turntablism' divides clubgoers with his mellow electronic strains

Her reports on dwarfism and the mass tide of immigrants to the Canaries are gracing German screens - the Catalan journalist gives a voice to those without

As Estonia prepares to celebrate independence from the USSR, poet and intellectual Hasso Krull explains why Russian will never be an official language

The Parisian architect mixes architecture with ecology: a fashionable fifty-year-old with a diverse background and designer of the offbeat Tower Flower in Paris

The Czech stage director explains why 'European theatre' doesn't fit snugly into one box

Winner of the 2002 Prix Fémina for Foreign Writers for his splendid Montedidio – written in 'very Neapolitan Italian' – Erri de Luca reflects on Europe, the Mediterranean and the passing of generations

Jorge Sampaio, former President of Portugal, on the European dream, a constitution revival and feeling Portugese

He wrote Danube in a café, and it's in a café that we meet the Triestine novelist, translator and very European intellectual

Terry Gilliam spent half his life in London, where he created Monty Python with a group of like-minded comedians. At 65, the actor-director’s spirits remain as imaginative and animated as ever

‘Scontro di civiltà per un ascensore a piazza Vittorio’, has been consecrated Italy’s literary sensation of the year. The 36 year old Algerian-born author, who is Italian at heart, tells us his story

French chef Alain Passard, 50, makes vegetables the key players in his culinary delights

The 41-year-old singer and frontman of the harmonic choral group 'A Filetta' talks about his latest album, 'Medea', which compares Seneca's heroine to Corsica and Jason to France.

Guillemots, a new Brit pop band from London, hit the continent with some new pop tunes

'The European system is fossilized.' Ronald Plasterk, Minister of Education, Culture and Science, flips from laboratories to TV screens and exposes the shortcomings of science education in Europe

Visionary bohemian, shrewd artist or cool businessman? The Austrian Wolfgang Stranziger, 36 years old, lomography founder, discusses the ‘fortuitous’ beginnings of his empire of snappy, zany photography

As the owner of one of the most beautiful modern-day Romany voices, Mónika Miczura, 37, affirms her musical freedom, reclaims her own traditional instincts and modernity, and turns her back on the standard clichés of gypsy folklore.

The Bulgarian ambassador to Germany and qualified forester can navigate her way around the Berlin diplomatic circuit as easily as the forests of home